Sacred Men: Law, Torture, and Retribution in Guam

by Keith L. Camacho

Overview

Between 1944 and 1949 the United States Navy held a war crimes tribunal that tried Japanese nationals and members of Guam's indigenous Chamorro population who had worked for Japan's military government. In Sacred Men Keith L. Camacho traces the tribunal's legacy and its role in shaping contemporary domestic and international laws regarding combatants, jurisdiction, and property. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's notions of bare life and Chamorro concepts of retribution, Camacho demonstrates how the U.S. tribunal used and justified the imprisonment, torture, murder, and exiling of accused Japanese and Chamorro war criminals in order to institute a new American political order. This U.S. disciplinary logic in Guam, Camacho argues, continues to directly inform the ideology used to justify the Guantánamo Bay detention center, the torture and enhanced interrogation of enemy combatants, and the American carceral state.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478005667
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	11/22/2019
Series:	Global and Insurgent Legalities
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Keith L. Camacho is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, author of Cultures of Commemoration: The Politics of War, Memory, and History in the Mariana Islands, and coeditor of Militarized Currents: Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction  1
Part I. The State of Exception
1. War Bodies  29
2. War Crimes  60
Part II. The Bird and the Lizard
3. Native Assailants  89
4. Native Murderers  116
Part III. The Military Colony
5. Japanese Traitors  149
6. Japanese Militarists  181
Conclusion  215
Notes  225
Bibliography  269
Index  283

What People are Saying About This

The Fourth Eye: Maori Media in Aotearoa New Zealand - Brendan Hokowhitu

“Exceedingly engaging, theoretically accomplished, and incisively researched, Sacred Men unravels the 1944 U.S. military tribunal in Guam, which included the prosecution and torture of Chamorro indigenes. Employing Agamben's homo sacer, Keith L. Camacho provides a razor-sharp analysis of the tribunal as a very real ‘bare life’ event but also as a metaphor for the murder, torture, and foreclosure of political life that has occurred throughout the colonies as ‘states of exception.’”

Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes - Lisa Yoneyama

“Sacred Men is a truly singular work of immense importance. It is original, compelling, and fiercely thought-provoking. Through a theoretical engagement with the Chamorro, Rotanese, and Saipanese indigenous epistemologies, Keith L. Camacho has brought the discussion of U.S. empire, law, sovereignty, militarism, and the working of carceral power to an entirely new horizon in ways no other scholar has done. A pathbreaking, field-shifting intervention.”

Editorial Reviews

Exceedingly engaging, theoretically accomplished, and incisively researched, Sacred Men unravels the 1944 U.S. military tribunal in Guam, which included the prosecution and torture of Chamorro indigenes. Employing Agamben's homo sacer, Keith L. Camacho provides a razor-sharp analysis of the tribunal as a very real ‘bare life’ event but also as a metaphor for the murder, torture, and foreclosure of political life that has occurred throughout the colonies as ‘states of exception.’

The Fourth Eye: Maori Media in Aotearoa New Zealand - Brendan Hokowhitu

Sacred Men is a truly singular work of immense importance. It is original, compelling, and fiercely thought-provoking. Through a theoretical engagement with the Chamorro, Rotanese, and Saipanese indigenous epistemologies, Keith L. Camacho has brought the discussion of U.S. empire, law, sovereignty, militarism, and the working of carceral power to an entirely new horizon in ways no other scholar has done. A pathbreaking, field-shifting intervention.

Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes - Lisa Yoneyama

Author Keith Camacho is especially interested in developing an analysis of law, justice, incarceration, and punishment in colonial situations...and in weaving this theoretical apparatus into the longer and larger history of US colonial rule in both North America and abroad.... [P]ath-breaking work...

Pacific Affairs - Glenn Petersen

Camacho’s intricately researched and powerfully theorized book Sacred Men is the first to examine, at close range, the U.S. Navy trials of Japanese and native people in Guam before and after 1945.... [It] should be required reading for all graduate students and scholars of war, justice, and the American empire in the Pacific.

Journal of Military History - Franziska Seraphim

Through uncovering these once buried stories, Camacho illustrates a wide range of human responses to the pressures of war and colonial domination. . . . Sacred Men will prove to be a welcome addition to the cannon of Marianas history.

Small States & Territories - Michael R. Clement Jr.

"Provocative and engaging, Camacho’s work not only breaks new ground in postcolonial and transpacific studies, but also calls attention to the role that Chamorro, Rotanese, and Saipanese indigenous epistemologies may play in the decolonization and deimperialization of US-occupied Guam."

Choice - Y. Shu

Sacred Men makes crucial theoretical, methodological, and historiographical interventions into carceral studies, Indigenous studies, and studies of U.S. empire and militarism.... Sacred Men is an essential resource for scholars of Indigenous peoples, especially those separated by political regimes and imperial boundaries."

Amerasia Journal - Kristin Oberiano